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This paper investigates the role of farm diversification for dietary diversity of households in smallholder agriculture. We use the Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) dataset of the World Bank from Ethiopia and Tanzania. The results of the study show that farm diversification contributes to dietary diversity of farm households. Furthermore, we show that the effects of farm diversification and proportion of purchased food on the dietary diversity of the household significantly varies across families who are in food poverty, and the food secure families. Rural development efforts towards diversified farming systems can contribute to improve the food security and dietary diversity of farm households, especially if targeted towards nutritionally rich food production schemes.

A successful family farming sector is strategic for developing rural areas, but is is endangered by household-specific market failures, high transaction costs and low bargaining power. Contract farming and collective actions are two common institutional devices for acquiring a level of certainty regarding market information, delivery conditions and procurement prices. Farmers’ associations is one of the common form of collective actions, but faces problems of opportunistic behaviour from their participating members. The intensity of group identity felt by an individual member is an essential determinant of the level of commitment and support granted towards the association. This case study analyzes the interdependence between individual identification intensity and revealed commitment for a commodity specific association that is based on individual membership. Members and non-members of the association participated in a questionnaire followed by a natural field experiment concerning their social identity towards the existing pepper association. By manipulating the social identity variable it could be seen that social identity has an influence on the participation of the individual in the association. This effect could be found for members and non-members alike. Strengthened social identity generally increased the participation of the individual in the organisation.

This paper systematically investigates the role of the quality of rural employment on agricultural production efficiency in developing countries, taking Ethiopia and Tanzania as cases. We use data of the Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) collected in 2011. In the analysis, an output-oriented distance function approach that accounts for different technological, demographic, socio-economic, institutional and quality of rural employment indicators is applied. The findings of the analysis support the idea that the quality of rural employment could be seen as an effective element of rural development policies and strategies in sub-Saharan Africa. Better integration of quality rural employment aspects (creation of jobs, improving quality of jobs, promoting public employment programs etc.) contribute to improve technical efficiency in agricultural production.

Promoting decent rural employment, by creating new jobs in rural areas and upgrading the existing ones, could be one of the most efficient pathways to reduce rural poverty. This paper systematically investigates the role of decent rural employment on agricultural production efficiency in sub-Saharan African countries, taking Ethiopia and Tanzania as case countries. The analysis applies an output-oriented distance function approach with an estimation procedure that accounts for different technological, demographic, socio-economic, institutional and decent rural employment indicators. Data of the most recent round of Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) for the two countries are used, and a set of indicators are derived to proxy core dimensions of decent rural employment. The findings of our analysis support the idea that integrating decent rural employment aspects in rural development policies and strategies can contribute to improve agricultural production efficiency in sub-Saharan Africa.